Crescent
by Cateria
Summary: Lord Voldemort would watch, amused, as Harry Potter's world crumbled the day Hermione Granger disappeared. LVHG
1. Chapter 1

_Crescent_

Hermione Jane Granger was, contrary to popular belief and opinion, not just Harry Potter's second best friend and snotty know-it-all. She was a lioness, posing at the precipice, majestic – hair crackling with energy when excited – and in possession of the ability to analyse any situation at any time. Hermione was curious, and for her curiosity to be satisfied, she would delve into the pages of the whispering, dry books of her beloved libraries. She was insatiable in her pursue of knowledge.

Hermione Granger was no beauty, but her brown eyes with flecks of gold and her wild, wild hair had a grace in themselves. With her smile and her laugh she would enthral them; with her tongue and her shrewd mind she would bewilder them.

Lord Voldemort watched her, watched her – ever patient – from the back of your childhood hero's mind. (Not so innocent, after all…) He watched with mounting excitement the beam of her smile and the bubble of her laughter. Voldemort knew not what Harry Potter saw in his red-haired Ginerva (except perhaps the boy's own mother). Voldemort _knew_, ever near omniscient, that Hermione would be the key, for _she _could not be broken in such ways as torture. He observed her shameless respect for her ancestry – filthy muggles – with those jeans and tops; _flattering, _some call them.

Lord Voldemort would watch, amused, as Harry Potter's world crumbled the day Hermione Granger disappeared. He would watch as the Chosen One sought comfort in his love's arms and would be thrilled by how they'd lost their primary source of logic (though he, grudgingly, had to admit that Potter's own intelligence wasn't as bad as Snape had loudly proclaimed ("Arrogant, foolish boy. Just like his father.")).

Her room – it was no cell – was shaped as a crescent. It was comfortable enough. Hermione Granger was not to be broken by such mere means as torture, she would break herself. And when she had interpreted and analyzed and concluded that there was no way out – he'd project images of her friends to her every day – she would fall, mind unbroken but hope crushed.

Then _he _would come, he, the Dark Lord. He'd smile as she cried and grew wet at the sound of another human voice. He knew his eyes would burn red as she shivered – back curved – at his touch of her arm. Voldemort would hiss quietly to Nagini, and the giant snake would encircle her waist and flicker her forked tongue against Hermione's soft skin.

When Voldemort would take his leave she would hate herself for wanting him to stay, rushing into the bathroom and scrub with cold water till her skin flushed red. Touching herself with the sponge, all the same.

The next day her hopeful horrors – those nightmares your naughty mind secretly wishes would come true – would occur. Those dreams of men and women who blends with the darkness, synonymous with fear and pain and hurt. They would tie her to the bed that had been hers for weeks and not even _her_ mind would rationalize the sensation of pain and pleasure mixed.

But not yet. He would have to wait, but waiting was not unfamiliar to the Dark, Dread Lord.

The wait would only make the experience itself more enjoyable.

The night was cold, damp and foggy. Ron, Harry, Ginny and Hermione sat huddled in front of the fireplace. They had found this cottage in the midst of a vast forest in Normandie, where it was rumoured that Rowena Ravenclaw had spent her last days. Save for Nagini and the Dark Lord himself, this was the only Horcrux that was yet to be destroyed. Gryffindor had long since been eliminated.

They said nothing, for they had nothing left to say. They had small-talked incessant chatter the first few months of their travels, but they had grown tired. Harry was sinking deeper into a depression as what he had to do finally had its impact on him, and it was Ginny's job to cheer him up. Ron was continually fed information from Harry's reoccurring "visions" and was planning where it'd be safest to go next. And Hermione … Hermione was doing all the research, brewing the potions that they might feel the need for sometime in the future and target-practising her curses. Harry would find them in the books, and, having so much power and such an aptitude for it, would master them first and best. Hermione was second, Ron fell down bottommost.

Hermione was optimistic on the outside, bubbling with laughter at some joke Ron would come with. She liked Ron, he was so different from herself. She could see herself marrying him someday, if they won this war. _If. _On the inside Hermione grew more and more anxious. They'd never make it. Harry was a powerful sorcerer, but the Dark Lord had so much more experience, and no great moral fibre that stopped him from blatantly using the Dark Arts. Harry, however, did, and it could very well end up being his downfall.

Hermione did not want to die, but she'd sacrifice herself for whatever cause she truly worked for and believed in. She had decided this a long time ago.

It was dark and she was out for a short walk when they ambushed her. Hermione tried to scream, but it did no good. Lord Voldemort watched, amused, as Harry Potter's world crumbled the day Hermione Granger disappeared. He watched as the Chosen One sought comfort in his love's arms, unable to comprehend his loss, and blaming himself for everything.

She did not know for how long she had been captured. Time passed slowly here, and the air was thick with tension, nervousness. The only thing that she knew for sure was that the Order had surely given her up for dead – with the exception of Harry and Ron, perhaps – and that _they _were not finished with her. A part of her, the lonely but Gryffindor part, wished they weren't. Wished they weren't finished so that she could hear voices other than her own, feel skin other than her own, and, defiantly enough, spit in their faces and refuse to give in. She'd never tire of it. Ever.

Her room, she had noticed the first time she'd been allowed to see upon capture, was in the shape of a crescent. She knew not why. It was this that kept her from insanity – the opportunity to use her intelligence on something else than escape, as they'd surely want her to think. _That would _have driven her insane. After having slept in the bed – which she was sure was not customary for a prisoner – seven times, this turned into a game of figuring out the puzzles of the Dark Lord's mind and actions.

Every once in a while said Dread Lord would send her images of her friends being tortured and dying. She knew they were usually false – poor Neville set aside – but she'd still stare blankly at the wall. She stopped crying three visions ago. Crying was useless.

What must have been a month later, she sat huddled, stroking her arms and sick of loneliness. She was muttering to herself, obscure philosophies and laws flowing from between her lips, anything to hear a voice, to stop herself from going insane. Finally, though, she thought she had figured out why she had been put in this room.

She lay asleep in the bed when He came to see her. He brushed some hair away from her face, but she did not stir. Squatting, he hissed her name, red eyes glinting with amusement.

That seemed to do the trick. Her eyes flew open and her hands went for the tangled blanket, pulling it up and attempting to cover her naked self. Carefully, cautious, her eyes sought out the source of the sound, but its supposed origin of birth was empty.

She knew better than to be fooled though. Tentatively, she let her eyes scan the room. There, at the end of the room, she could make out the silhouette of a thin, tall man with glowing red eyes.

With movements as quick as a snake's, the man was beside her. Cool breath fanned her face, and unnaturally long, white fingers that were so cold they seemed to absorb warmth, rather than radiating it, were stroking her cheek and neck in a mockery of concern.

"Hermione," he whispered.

She shivered.


	2. Chapter 2

**To all of you who have waited for years now for this story to be updated: I am sorry. I never really meant for it to be anything more than a one-shot, but I recently discovered that I had - in a fit of utter stupidity - managed not to press the 'completed'-button, so I wrote this chapter as a way of completing the story once and for all. I apologise if this is shorter than you would've wanted, or simply altogether a different kind of ending than what you had expected, but I do hope you enjoy it!**

**Needless to say this is now severely AU and fairly OOC as well. Furthermore, there is a small lemon there towards the end.**

_**Disclaimer: All characters and events you recognise do not belong to me, but are the property of J.K. Rowling and Warner Brothers Entertainment Inc.**_

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He never touched her. When he came his hands would skim along her body, never touching, the only friction being the sensation of air against her skin as engendered by the movement of his hands. Hermione lay still, her eyes closed, her breath hitched, so tempted to let herself feel something after months of isolation, but too proud and defiant to let the Dark Lord be that person. He didn't speak to her, but hissed softly to Nagini, and let his breath fan against her neck and his robes brush against the back of her legs. It unnerved her, he knew, because it was him and because she still craved it in her loneliness.

He knew exactly what she craved.

She craved the feeling of sun on her skin, the sound of laughter, the texture of paper underneath her fingers. She craved the casual touch of a friend and the challenge of a solvable mystery instead of these repetitive riddles made by a man whose wish and purpose was to make her break herself. And because she was stronger than that, she'd never ask. Never beg. _Never_ break.

He came and went as he pleased, sometimes simply watching her, sometimes standing behind her and inhaling the scent of her hair, sometimes laughing his high-pitched laugh at the sight of her glaring at him. Lord Voldemort brought her books, works written by intelligent authors and she couldn't help but read them, and when he made her talk about them, she couldn't help but enjoy the discussion. They were books on the Dark Arts, of course, but she wouldn't have expected anything else, and she didn't care so long as she could satisfy part of her hunger for knowledge.

When he suddenly kissed her she was devoid of reaction, her mind drawing up a blank and her thoughts running comically like a broken record – he kissed me, is he _kissing_ me?, Lord Voldemort is kissing me? Her eyes flew open in belated surprise and found his red eyes focussed on her, split pupils just slightly dilated, and it all made her gasp a little, because it could not be real … but it was, and he took her open mouth as an invitation to stake claim on every corner of her mouth, his tongue twisting, grinding, massaging. He leant over and they lay down on the bed, and she couldn't decide whether he was unexpectedly heavy or light, and whether it was normal to kiss with open eyes. She knew what was coming, of course, and she didn't push him away – that would only have made him laugh that awful laugh, she knows. Instead, she focussed on trying to enjoy this so that when he eventually invaded her body with his coldness it didn't hurt – nor did it really hurt when, in the aftermath, he leant down and whispered that Harry saw that, and how does she think Harry feels now?

When he returned she asked him why her room was in the shape of a crescent and he said that 'there is no good and evil, there is only power' – and she knew instinctively what he meant. A feeling of something foreign bubbled up in her and her eyes hardened, longing for that power. Taking his cold and serpentine face in her hands, she pushed him backwards until his back was flush with the wall and then she forces her mouth onto his and her tongue into his mouth. He let her take control, let her rip his clothes off him and make him inhale sharply at the feel of teeth on his neck and nipples and a warm hand around his cock. He didn't protest when she pushed him the ground and rode him to the sound of Nagini's hissing. And when she collapsed on top of him in a heap of orgasm and guilt, he wrapped his arms around her in a parody of an embrace and held her thus until sleep overtook her.

The following night he let her go.

He watched her through Harry Potter's eyes and felt a rush of pleasure at her every nightmare and strangled breath in the night, so loud in their tent. But it was not until a month later that he noticed the repetitiveness of the images he spied through Harry's eyes, and at this revelation he felt the boy push into his mind something foreign and unwelcome. He felt it rise through his body from his stomach, tear through his heart with savage brutality, up his throat and making his breath hitch and his tear ducts burn. Surely his heart was being ripped apart and carved out of his chest; surely his breath was being stolen by some mysterious thing mere moments before he could inhale, exhale. He clutched his chest with spidery fingers and breathed through the pain, turning around slowly until he was met by sad and green green eyes.

'So this it how it feels,' he whispered, and green seemed to stretch out from the eyes, reflecting all around him like lightning and snatching his heart and breath away with finality. His body twisted and fell to the ground, collapsing in the shape of a crescent.

A tear fell out of Harry Potter's green eyes and Hermione Granger wrapped her arms around him in comfort. 'I'm sorry,' she croaked; and for whom, she didn't know .


End file.
